


Face Paint & Blueberry Bubblegum

by Florchis



Category: Naruto
Genre: Canon Compliant, Friendship, Gen, Headcanon, Sukea - Freeform, Unmasked Kakashi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-30
Updated: 2020-12-30
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:42:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28417062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Florchis/pseuds/Florchis
Summary: A friend gives him his disguise, another calls him out on it.
Relationships: Haruno Sakura & Hatake Kakashi, Hatake Kakashi & Nohara Rin
Comments: 2
Kudos: 44





	Face Paint & Blueberry Bubblegum

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mallml](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mallml/gifts).



> Written for @mallml for the Drabbles <-> Doodles event at the Kakashi Lounge server! This was inspired by [this gorgeous fanart](https://mallml.tumblr.com/post/179722135274/bubblegum). Hope you enjoy it!
> 
> I know that Sukea uses something like patches instead of face paint, but dunno. I got attached to this idea and I had to write it. 
> 
> Rated T not for anything in particular but because canon is forked up enough.

It all begins with Rin.

It has been a rough couple of weeks since Obito… well, since Obito. 

They don’t have much free time to dwell on their grief- no one ever has- and when they do, Rin never wants to talk about Obito. 

Kakashi can’t really say he blames her.

It still kills him more than it heals him to see her trying- and failing- to be her usual cheerful self, but it is what they have. It might never be enough, but that won’t change what it is. 

“Do you think people would recognize you if you were to walk into the village without your mask, Kakashi?”

Kakashi frowns but doesn’t stop looking at the clouds to look at her. It’s easy to entertain Rin’s little fantasies; Kakashi can, with all the rage and all the crushed hope of his tender years, see them both falling into complaisance with each other, can already smell the sweet scent of putrescence under his nose. 

He wonders- always will- if the same would have happened to Obito and Rin if he had been the one to pass.

He can not tell her this much without being harsh so instead, he says, “I don’t think so.” Even without the mask, there would be, of course, the glaring issue of the Sharingan, but they are not talking about it. 

Rit sits up immediately to start digging in the first-care pouch that she always carries around with her. She takes out a small pot of face-paint and grins at him. 

“Let’s try it now.”

This is the moment he says no. The mask is something that has been with him for as long as he has memories, and Kakashi can not imagine baring his face for someone unless it is a life or death situation.

Maybe this one is one of those.

“I still have a Sharingan and an obvious face-scar,” he warns her even while he sits up to stay cross-legged facing her. This might as well be the first time he mentions the scar out loud- it feels shameful to even sound like he is complaining when he got away with so little and was willing to give so much.

Rin shrugs and taps the small brush against her leg to shake off any potential dust.

“You can still use your headband for the eye, and the paint is for the scar.”

“Okay.”

It feels strange, still, to take off his mask in front of her, but not as much as he expected. They have seen each other in worse circumstances, he supposes.

She does not comment on his face but her tongue peeks out from her lips while she dips the brush carefully on the paint pot and then drags it down his skin. The touch of the brush is feather-light, and not only because of safety reasons, Kakashi closes his eyes.

“Kakashi,” she conjures after a while, and it takes him out of the eery daydream created by her touch and their closeness. She wavers and Kakashi steels himself for anything: for crying, for a struggle, for an enemy. Whatever she needs, whatever she throws his way, whatever she asks, he will be ready. Always. “Kakashi, have you ever done a bubble-gum balloon?”

“Mmm, no?”

She flashes him a grin and he is the one who thinks that her face can not be real. 

“I imagined, what with you always wearing the mask.” She rummages in her pockets and takes out two blueberry gum pieces. Obito would tease her that she is like a grandma, always with candy in her pockets to give to children, but Obito is not here and Kakashi remains silent. “Here, I will teach you.”

They end up not testing the disguise on anyone else in the village. 

* * *

Kakashi ends up doing it on his own, with time, and will always think of her while he is Sukea.

* * *

It all ends with Sakura.

“You are getting too old for these shenanigans.”

Kakashi- in full-Sukea disguise- freezes in his spot. She is not wrong, but she has no way of knowing it.

“You don’t know my age, though, hm, Haruno-san it is?”

She doesn’t even dignify him with a reply; she grabs his wrist not with a chakra-enhanced grip but with enough force to bruise if he resists and then licks the thumb of her other hand. Kakashi closes his eyes in defeat while she rubs it on his face until the paint smears, presumably leaving the scar out in the open. What she did is gross, but she once stuck her hand literally inside of Naruto’s ribcage. Kakashi can handle some spit.

“Don’t I?” she deadpans him, and Kakashi opens his eyes again out of pure cockiness.

“How long have you know?”

Her eyes still deviate a little to the lower half of his face, and Kakashi has to control himself to not do something like a tiny victory dance. _See, Sakura? I need to do this to keep you all on your toes!_

“Long enough,” she murmurs while, now that all the pretenses have fallen, she goes back to work on the wound on his leg that made the children bring him to the hospital. She waits till he has stopped hissing at the intrusion of the foreign chakra on his body to speak again. “You have slipped in hiding your chakra signature quite a few times.”

“Damn, I must really be getting old, then.”

“Or I must be getting good.”

He almost pats her on the head while she is still bent over his knee, but he takes back his hand at the last second. It doesn’t get any easier to know how to navigate his relationship with these adults that once were his children but never were truly children nor truly his. 

“Probably both.”

She smiles at him again, now in acknowledgment of him allowing her a win. She nods at her handiwork where there is absolutely no trace of injury left, looking proud, and Kakashi’s heart pangs in his chest. “Don’t worry, sensei, I won’t tell Naruto.”

Ah, Naruto. No matter how powerful and how old he gets, this kind of subtleties always will fly over his head. It’s part of his charm, Kakashi has decided by now. Bless his heart.

“Oh, but maybe you should tell him. I am sure he will foam at the mouth at knowing that you saw me without a mask and he hasn’t.”

“Even though he has,” Sakura giggles and the mischievous gleam in her eyes tells him that she likes the idea. “I will think about it.”

He nods again and tries the weight on the leg, feeling absolutely no discomfort. She really keeps on surpassing herself every time. 

“Thank you, Sakura."

She throws something from his desk at his chest, and Kakashi grabs it on the fly only because he will always be Kakashi of the Sharingan, even without the Sharingan.

“Don't thank me, but next time come by my office to catch up and not to get healed, okay?”

“Hai, hai.”

His blueberry gum-balloon doesn't pop until he is already back home.


End file.
